HIV-positive gay men’s experiences of stigma and rejection by sexual partners strongly influence their involvement in casual sex and discourage them from practicing many risk-reduction strategies, report Sigma Research in their Relative Safety II report published this week.
A lovely google book on HIV/AIDS. I have not read all of this, and it was written in 2000, so it is possible this is not as useful as it first appears.
I don’t have cable, but this piece has been floating around some time. In light of yesterday’s decision to uphold Proposal 8 by the Supreme Court of California, I find this editorial commentary worthy of replay. Oberman asks some very important, very powerful questions.
Buried on page 795 of President Obama’s budget, released last Thursday, is a paragraph banning the federal funding of needle-exchange programs for drug addicts — an apparent about-face on his campaign promise to overturn that longstanding ban. To the further consternation of AIDS and addiction activists, a statement of support for needle exchange was recently removed from the White House website. Is Obama reversing course?
The Administration says no. Responding by email, Jeff Crowley, director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy said that the President has no plans to abandon needle exchange, but is simply not moving on the issue yet. “The President is looking forward to working with Congress and the American people to build support for this change,” says Crowley, “and his Administration is committed to moving forward to address the federal ban on syringe exchange programs as a part of a national HIV/AIDS strategy.”
Matt Comer, who runs the blog Interstate Q reached out to me some time ago and asked me to write a piece of his blog feature “Fessing Up.” The goal of his series is to explore some of the dirty secrets of the gay men’s community. Matt specifically wanted me to write about HIV stigma, and so I did.
Here is a link. Go ahead and comment at Interstate Q, or here on this blog.
Johnson Aziga A Canadian court has handed down the world’s first murder conviction for knowingly exposing and infecting someone with the AIDS virus. But as an HIV-positive woman, I know that the man who infected me only deserves half the blame.
As a woman who contracted HIV from a man who claimed to have been unaware he was HIV positive, I have never entirely blamed him. Prior to being with him, I asked him questions aimed at identifying his risk factors for having HIV. Based on my trust of him, and his answers, I took a calculated risk and had unprotected sex with him. I rolled the dice—and lost.
Should he go to jail? Some courts around the world, and some U.S. states, think so. HIV transmission is increasingly being criminalized. And a court in Canada has taken the criminalization of people with HIV to a new level of severity: Last month in Toronto, Johnson Aziga, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1996, was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and 10 counts of aggravated assault for transmitting HIV to two female partners, both of whom eventually died from AIDS-related illness.
The Ingham County Health Department is ringing the alarm bell a bit louder this month, as they are now looking at 18 cases of syphilis in Ingham county since Jan. 1. Last year, the county saw only 3 cases the entire year. Of interesting note, 40 percent of these cases are in men who have sex with men and are HIV positive as well.
Increase in syphilis cases worries local health departments
In Ingham County, ‘we would have to refer to this situation as a syphilis outbreak,’ says local health official.
By TODD A. HEYWOOD 5/12/09 12:48 AM EDIT
LANSING — Facing a significant increase in reported cases of syphilis infections, the Ingham County Health Department says it’s the midst of an outbreak of the sexually transmitted bacterial infection.
“An outbreak is defined as any incidence of disease that exceeds the usual and expected incidence,” said Renee Canady, deputy health officer for the Ingham County Health Department. “So by formal definition, we would have to refer to this situation as a syphilis outbreak.”
And exceeding the usual or expected incidence of syphilis is exactly where Ingham County is today with syphilis cases. But the county is not alone and local health officials across the state are on the lookout for signs of what could be a worsening situation.
In February, Ingham County called the first month of 2009 “alarming” because of a hike in the number of reported syphilis cases. Then it was only three, the same number the county, home to the state capital and East Lansing, had reported in all of 2008.
BAY CITY — In early 1999, Michael S. Holder had just gotten out of prison where he had been serving time for retail theft and burglary since 1993. Although he was married, when a woman who was with a friend of his sent him a drink at a bar the three were visiting, he took the woman up on her offer.
The two became fast friends. So fast, in fact, by that spring, the woman and Holder had moved in together, sharing an apartment in a township just outside Bay City.
The two were intimate, sexually and emotionally connected.
In June 1999, the woman developed thrush, an infection of the mouth associated with HIV infection. She also, according to court transcripts, developed a rash on her body.
That relationship was rocky, with Holder saying it was on again and off again for months. In 2000, when he was in jail awaiting charges related to an allegation he was dealing drugs, the relationship went from rocky to an alleged perpetrator-victim relationship. He was accused of failing to tell his female friend that he was HIV positive before they had sex. He was arraigned on the charge in July 2000.
